What's REALLY going on in politics in Loudoun County, Virginia

Rabble rousing, Loudoun Republican style

It’s time for a small thought experiment/reality test.

Let’s suppose a Democratic elected local official began a well-orchestrated political campaign against a private business solely on the grounds that, in his view, it charges too much for its products or services.

He denounces the high cost the company is charging in his “news[sic]letters” to constituents. He enlists other local Democratic officials to file an official complaint with state regulators over the high cost the company is charging. He uses official government resources to launch a drive to urge constituents to join in a petition campaign and add their names to a protest against the high price the business is charging and to attend a public hearing to repeat that same opnion.

What would we imagine in such a case the reaction would be of the local Republican Party, particularly its Tea Party wing, with its staunch support of free enterprise and denunciation of government interference and bureaucratic regulators?

Now with that thought experiment out of the way, is it too much to ask exactly why local GOP officialdom, to a person, has been staging a well-orchestrated campaign against the prices that the privately built and privately owned and operated Greenway is charging for tolls? Chairman Scott York (R-At Large), Supervisors Janet Clarke R-Blue Ridge), Ralph Buona (R-Ashburn), and others have in recent weeks been sending out identically worded messages to constituents stating: “The State Corporation Commission (SCC) is currently investigating the toll rates of the Greenway based on Delegate David Ramadan’s request. . . . Delegate Ramadan will be submitting a list to the SCC of all the names of the individuals who joined the petition. However, please plan to attend one of the hearings above to testify in person about your experience and the need to lower tolls on the Greenway.”

Apparently the principle of government non-interference in a private business to which these same officials regularly pledge fealty (for example in refusing to “interfere” in the Loudoun Hounds’s decision to build a stadium in a place where zoning forbid it) stops when there is an issue over which they think can stir up political advantage.

Or perhaps the Greenway corporation simply did not show the same generosity to Chairman York’s and other local GOP candidates’ election campaigns as did the Loudoun Hounds.